


A Target of War

by SomeBratInAMask



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, Teikou Era, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 19:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3180089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeBratInAMask/pseuds/SomeBratInAMask
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Kise is the world, then Haizaki is the moon that orbits him and Aomine is the sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Target of War

In the movies, the man corners the woman into a wall, his arms propped on either side of her so she cannot escape. He glowers down, a full head above her, and dips toward her lips. Her palms clamp anxiously to the wall, but once their faces meet she’s responding almost as if this love for him is out of her control; too far gone to resist.

Haizaki walks in on his mother watching a scene like this, and the next day he’s slamming Kise into the lockers of the boys’ changing room. They are the same height, perfectly eye-level, without that advantage Haizaki has with girls of looking down on them. Kise grunts when his spine hits the metal, Haizaki’s hands latching onto his wrists as he struggles for something to say, some purpose to roughing Kise up. “Where are your second-string friends?” Haizaki taunts, knowing that what he’s doing now is just harassment. That’s the way Kise will see it, because he’s dumb and can’t read between the lines, because he expects everyone to always spell things out for him.

“In the _gym._ Where I was _trying_ to go,” answers Kise, teeth grit. Kise’s wrists jerk against his, but Haizaki barely notices beneath the overwhelming sensation of pressed hands.

“Well, you better work hard, if you ever want to play as, you know, an actual member of the team.”

Kise sneers. “I _am_ an actual member. I would be watching your back on first-string, too, if I were you. I’m a quick learner.”

Kise gets to him like an earthquake, shaking his feelings up. Nothing flutters in Haizaki’s heart, like the gentle beating of butterfly wings, like the silent rhythm of Kise’s dark eyelashes. Instead, Haizaki’s heart rumbles, rock metal percussion, erratic fault lines. “I bet you are,” Haizaki murmurs. It sounds suggestive only because Kise’s entire existence is suggestive. And Haizaki can’t stand that, _hates that,_ because love makes him violent and Haizaki is so fucked. His fists clench tighter, hoping to cuff Kise to him, and suddenly Kise has his hands free and pushing against his chest.

Kise is rubbing his wrists and calling Haizaki “fucking insane” as he escapes the locker room. Haizaki stands, still facing the lockers. They haven’t smelled too strongly of boy since Kise brought body mist to cleanse the air with, his first week as a second-stringer.

Kise arrives to the next practice with his left wrist bandaged. Haizaki watches it curiously as they run suicides, then divvy up teams for a match. Aomine and Kise stand beside each other in line, Akashi appointing jerseys with his finger. Aomine catches Kise’s wrist. “What the hell is wrong with your hand?”

“Oh, it’s bruised,” Kise says, inspecting his hand with Aomine. “I thought bandages looked cooler than an ugly purple splotch, and it’s only one hand, so it’s not like I’m _really_ copying Midorimacchi.”

“Did you fall or something, dumbass?”

“Mean!” Kise accuses, pouting. Haizaki wants to bite his bottom lip till that soft skin bleeds, and  Haizaki instantly knows how Kise bruised his wrist.

“What, then, did you jack off too hard?” Aomine guesses.

Kise glares, crossing his arms. “I’m _right-_ handed, thank you.”

Haizaki’s eyes dart to Kise’s wrist as he tucks it across his chest. He’s urged to unwrap those bandages like layers of Kise, peeling them back as if skin to see the bruise he left there. He wants to see the bruise as proof that he exists in Kise’s world, that he can touch something perfect without it shattering.

 

Sometimes Aomine will tell a joke that Kise laughs at, and Haizaki can imagine himself saying exactly that. He can imagine a world where he replaces Aomine, where the things Haizaki says make Kise happy.

There is only one class that Haizaki shares with both Aomine and Kise. He hates this class: Aomine never stops talking, never stops whispering to Kise and borrowing pencils, punching Kise’s shoulder and then stopping where Haizaki can’t ever bring himself to.

But Haizaki loves his seat. He slouches in the chair and watches Kise’s blond hair brush his nape. Whenever he wants to reach out and play with the fringe, he defiantly kicks Kise’s chair and listens for the exaggerated outcry, the almost doting histrionics.

Today, Aomine plays with Kise’s new earring absently while the teacher lectures and Kise doodles geometric shapes in place of notes. Kise doesn’t even giggle, so accustomed to Aomine’s fingers poking his cheeks, tickling his neck, slapping his head. Haizaki observes this and thinks Kise must see Aomine’s body as an extension of his own, by how naturally they fuse together in casual interactions, like segmented limbs gravitating toward a central body.

Haizaki’s touch would be an invasion. Where Aomine became Kise, Haizaki would be treated like a virus to be annihilated, a target of war waged by every cell in Kise’s core.

Haizaki can exist in Kise’s world, but he can’t survive.

 

Haizaki is waiting for his mother to pick him up after school. He’s been waiting twenty minutes when Kise sits beside him on one of the benches outside.

“What’s up, Shougo-kun?” Kise greets, drinking from his water bottle as he leans back on the bench, stretching his arms and legs.

“Waiting on my ride to get me out of this hell hole.”

Kise closes his bottle and buries it in his backpack. “You could just walk home,” he recommends, shrugging. Haizaki detects an underlying meaning; Kise is insinuating he’s lazy.

“I’m tired after practice.” Haizaki doesn’t know why Kise would shame him for being lazy when Aomine is unrepentantly worse, nor why Haizaki even thinks Kise cares if he’s lazy as anything more than a convenient ammunition.

“Really? I don’t feel tired at all,” he informs breezily.

His earring catches the light from the sun, and Aomine fiddling with his ear flashes in Haizaki’s mind. Haizaki and Kise are sitting together, casually, and speaking, casually. Haizaki could be Aomine. He could make Kise laugh, make him shiver. His fingers go for Kise’s earring, caressing the little hoop and slightly swollen lobe.

Kise’s head swivels to Haizaki in shock. In the same moment, an impulse shoots through Haizaki’s nerves - a love out of control - and he yanks on Kise’s ear _hard._

Kise yelps, jerking back before slapping away Haizaki’s hand when it hangs on. “What the _hell?”_

Kise seethes, standing up. “Trying to rip my freaking ear off? What is _wrong_ with you?” Kise saddles his bag over one shoulder, preparing to leave.

“Your earring is stupid,” Haizaki retorts.

Kise looks at him like he’s gone absolutely mad. _“Then don’t look at it,”_ he says, walking off.

Haizaki keeps looking, every day.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I need to get around to watching season 3 episode 1. Apparently boyfriend punch is happening sooner than later. Meanwhile, my memories of the manga's chronology are blurring detrimentally.


End file.
